


see the wires pulling

by 1001cranes



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/M, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-19
Updated: 2014-07-19
Packaged: 2018-02-09 13:15:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1984311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1001cranes/pseuds/1001cranes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek keeps coming back, like a cat, like a stray, the kind who’d find it’s way back out with all the doors locked and the windows barred. Not that John tries.</p>
<p>He thinks Stiles knows, or suspects; there’s something in the way Stiles says her name, Derek Hale, like its shorthand for something else. Whether it’s a white flag of surrender or an attempt to wave the red cape and enrage, John doesn’t know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	see the wires pulling

The first time Derek kisses John, she catches him off guard. He startles when she steps forward - he reaches for his gun, actually, forgetting in his panic that he doesn’t wear his holster at home - and then is shortly embarrassed it’s been so long since someone kissed him he no longer recognizes the buildup. 

_I told you_ , he can hear Stiles in his head, clear as day,  _ladies like a man in uniform._ Though John was fairly certain Stiles had been referring to the soccer moms at the grocery store, not twentysomething persons of interest. 

It’s a short kiss, but not the sweet kind. There’s too much intent to be sweet. Too much weight. One of her hands rests at his waist, briefly, and when she steps away he smells what might be lavender, greenery. Dirt.

"Thank you," she says. "For Laura," just because John had set up the paperwork to rebury Laura on Hale land. He’d remembered the Hales were pagans, or something like it; after the fire the whole family had been buried in the middle of the woods, wrapped in flowers, and it didn’t seem too likely that Laura would have wanted different. 

John resists the urge to wipe off his mouth where she can see. “You don’t have to thank me,” he says instead, as something settles in his stomach. It wasn’t the first time someone had taken a shine to him just because he’d helped them out. It was a hazard of the job for law enforcement, and nurses and doctors too; John usually had to get involved once or twice a year down at the hospital when a patient’s gesture of appreciation went a little too far. 

"We might have been a little hasty," he continues. "Initially." He felt guilty, in some measure, for hauling Derek in for killing her sister, for jumping the gun because his kid had been spooked. Which isn’t to say John discounts women as murderers — even the violent ones, and maybe particularly the angry ones. He’s been around long enough to know better. But it had fairly obviously been an animal attack, in retrospect, and Derek’s closed-off front when they’d hauled her in could just have have easily read as traumatized instead of guilty. 

"It looked bad," Derek says, and her mouth twists. "I usually look bad."

John can’t disagree. In person, on paper - Derek Hale looks bad. Twenty-three years old, no known address or employment; orphaned at fifteen, hardly any kind of paper trail from there. She has wild hair, a leather jacket, a fast car still in her sister’s name, and something lurking behind her eyes, peering out beyond the edges of the fuck-off look permanently screwed to her face. Every part of her was prickly; every part of her kept people away; every part a warning whether by accident or by design, here be dragons and trauma and nothing else, no family or friends, no ballast. Girls like Derek disappeared every day, let themselves disappear, and there was so little to do about it.

"But I didn’t do it because I’m grateful," Derek says. "I did it because I wanted to." She has her hands tucked into her pockets, jacket falling open to show off the curves underneath her threadbare tank. Because the other inescapable truth is that Derek looks beautiful — _is_  beautiful, gorgeous and young and strong. She shouldn’t be kissing widowers nearly old enough to be her father. 

She stares at him, head tilted to the side, and eventually he nods. 

"Okay," he says, and it feels like he barely blinks before she disappears off the porch and slides into her Camaro.

| |

She keeps coming back, like a cat, like a stray, the kind who’d find it’s way back out with all the doors locked and the windows barred. Not that John tries.

He thinks Stiles knows, or suspects; there’s something in the way Stiles says her name,  _Derek Hale_ , like its shorthand for something else. Whether it’s a white flag of surrender or an attempt to wave the red cape and enrage, John doesn’t know.

| |

"Stiles is asleep," Derek says, so certain, so sure, an unwitting echo of Claudia and the early days when Stiles barely slept through the night instead of passing out anywhere remotely horizontal. "Still have work to do?"

John sighs a little. The answer doesn’t matter; she slides into his lap like she belongs there, blocking the table from view. Her hands settle on his shoulders and chest and knead like a cat; thighs clenched around his like iron. She must run, he thinks, out in the Preserve, near the ashes of the Hale House where he first arrested her. God. 

Sometimes it hits John that the last time he had a twenty-three year old in his lap he was the same age himself, discounting one or two unfortunate bachelor parties and a six-month period in Vice. It’s been a long time. A long time since he was with a woman, period, and the push-pull argument of calling Derek Hale a woman, of  _thinking_  about her as one, is always less an argument and more resignation. Sometimes John thinks half the reason he does this is because he doesn’t know where else she would go, if she’d go to anyone else at all.

"It’s nothing that can’t wait," he says. Cold cases, the thoroughly solvable ones that somehow never caught a break. The ones that keep John up at night  _did he, did he, did he_ , and knowing he left no stone unturned doesn’t always put the doubt to rest.

"Good." It comes out like an edict, short and not to be argued with; John certainly isn’t going to bother. She twists her hands in his hair and bites his lip before she really  _kisses_  him, the sigh that escapes his mouth captured neatly in hers. 

| |

She hardly ever stays the night. Which is good, John thinks, because the neighbors are desperate enough for gossip without seeing her Camaro parked there in the morning. John hasn’t been celibate since Claudia died, not by a long shot, but its been a while since he had something with strings. Expectations? Continuity, maybe. He wouldn’t have picked Derek Hale. Frankly, he doesn’t understand Derek Hale picking him either.

But sometimes - sometimes she curls up next to him, the first woman in this bed since Claudia, and she fits, strangely, younger and darker and broken and pieced back together. She whines in her sleep, low, and then higher when she’s awake and he goes down on her, hands curling up above her head and in the pillows and the sheets, shredding them, picking and pulling through the loose threads. Sometimes she rides him down into the bed and holds him there, her hair like a curtain across his face and chest, eyes glowing in the dark.


End file.
